by Rebecca Tope
‘You can say that again,’ Simmy agreed. ‘Even Mr Braithwaite’s murder was about that, in a way.’
‘You’ll have to explain that.’ Melanie spoke crossly, her frustration inescapable. ‘Ben said it was all about solar panels and climate change.’
‘Ben’s wrong. Partly, anyway. Mr Braithwaite was threatening to tell Daisy he’d seen Goss with Selena Drury, in the hope of making her cancel the wedding.’
‘I don’t get the climate stuff at all,’ Melanie complained. ‘Who’s right? Everything you read and see on the telly makes it seem obvious that we’re all doing it with our cars and coal and stuff. But Ben’s no fool. He seems sure it’s not that simple.’
‘I don’t know,’ sighed Simmy. ‘But I can’t believe Ben’s likely to be right. Kathy – what do you think?’
‘Don’t ask me. Jo’s a lot more clued up than me on that subject.’
‘Jo?’
The girl spoke carefully. ‘We have found some good data, but it won’t actually prove anything globally. I guess you have to go with the majority. Scientists have been misquoted a lot. The real question has to be what we do about it. Don’t you think?’
‘I’m with my Dad,’ said Simmy. ‘He says it’s too big a question for simplistic headlines. And he says it makes his head hurt when he thinks about it, so he prefers to let other people worry.’
‘Which is the best we’re going to get,’ summarised Melanie. ‘So what else was going on? Back to the love interest, by the looks of it. Sounds to me as if Goss really does love Daisy, even though he’s not very nice to her. And he was seeing Selena. He sent her those flowers, after all, knowing it’d cause trouble with Solomon.’
‘People do that sort of thing,’ said Joanna softly. ‘Even when they know it’ll get them into trouble. Men, especially. I saw Baz kissing one of the other students, a month or so ago, but he swore it never meant anything. He said men sometimes couldn’t control themselves.’
‘Rubbish!’ said Kathy and Melanie in one voice. ‘Total rubbish,’ added Kathy.
‘They just do what they think they can get away with,’ Melanie elaborated. ‘It’s not the same thing.’
‘Next year, I think I’ll go away for the first half of February,’ said Simmy. ‘And miss Valentine’s altogether. It obviously makes everybody crazy.’
‘No you won’t,’ laughed Melanie. ‘You’ll be madly in love with somebody yourself by then, and as gooey as everybody else.’
Simmy found nothing to say to that, thinking about the suffering DI Moxon, and how careless she had been with his feelings over recent days.
‘I bet you I’m right,’ Melanie went on. ‘I even bet I know who it’ll be.’
‘That police detective, I suppose,’ said Kathy. ‘He’s obviously keen on you.’
‘Please don’t say that. It makes me feel terrible.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of him, anyhow,’ said Melanie.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Angie and Russell reacted very badly to the appearance of a damaged daughter on the doorstep. ‘Is that blood on your leg?’ Russell demanded, as she stumbled into the kitchen and lowered herself into the chair by the Rayburn.
‘Just a little cut,’ she said. ‘It probably isn’t even mine. It’s been a perfectly horrible day, Dad. Everything got a bit out of control, I’m afraid.’ She gave a brief and rather garbled account of events to her appalled parents.
Angie was at first incredulous, then furious. ‘I can’t believe you’d be such a fool,’ she shouted. ‘It’s as if you deliberately put yourself in danger. Why must you do that? What perverse spirit possesses you?’
‘It wasn’t deliberate,’ Simmy argued calmly. ‘One thing led to another, and at no point did I feel I had a choice. There were men with knives, for God’s sake. They threatened us. And I had to rescue Kathy. There was definitely no choice about that.’
‘None of this makes the slightest sense,’ complained Russell. ‘Why was Kathy in Coniston in the first place? Who are all these people?’
‘It doesn’t matter, really. Except one of them killed a perfectly nice man, who was a friend of DI Moxon. Now he’s in hospital, fighting for his life. Moxon, I mean. The nice man is dead.’
‘Fighting for his life?’ repeated Angie sceptically. ‘That’s tomorrow’s headline, is it?’
‘Probably. He was stabbed in the chest and nearly died. I was collateral damage, you might say.’
‘You should have stayed right out of it.’
‘I know. I agree. I have no idea what I thought I was doing. It just seemed unfair that he should be hurt when he was only doing his job. Actually, that isn’t really true. I didn’t think anything at all at the time. It was all just instinct. I dislocated the murderer’s arm,’ she added proudly. ‘Moxon was trying to arrest him, and he pulled out this awful knife.’
‘If the murdered man was his friend, shouldn’t he have been taken off the case in the first place?’ asked Russell.
‘Possibly. But apparently nobody was too worried about it. I’m still not sure why he was in Coniston at all. Somebody must have phoned him.’ An idea occurred to her. ‘Most likely the man on reception. He was obviously suspicious when Baz took us all up the mountain with him.’
‘I wish I knew some of these people,’ Angie complained. ‘What was the motive, anyway?’
‘Ben says it was all about solar panels, and climate change not really mattering, and renewables being doomed to oblivion. But it wasn’t just that. Basically, it was all about love.’ She sighed. ‘Most crimes are about that, aren’t they? When it comes right down to it. Jealous love. Frightened love. People terrified of losing somebody they depend on for their happiness. If that’s threatened somehow, they see red. It’s amazing, really, how powerful it is.’
‘Can’t see that stuffed-shirt of a detective ever falling in love,’ remarked Angie.
Simmy sat up and glared at her mother. ‘He’s not a stuffed shirt. Not at all. He’s totally human, with a full set of emotions. Melanie thinks, believe it or not, that he’s in love with me.’
Angie stuck to her guns. ‘Sounds as if every man involved in this case was trying to impress a woman. Bloody fools.’
Russell put a hand on his wife’s arm. ‘Steady on, old girl. It’s not all bad, you know. From what I can understand, it hasn’t worked out so terribly, by and large.’ He smiled at Simmy. ‘I know there’s a lot more you haven’t told us, but for now, you need a bit of peace and quiet.’
‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘But before that I need food. I haven’t had a thing since breakfast.’
On Sunday afternoon, she went with Ben and Melanie to visit Moxon in Kendal. Melanie drove Simmy’s car again, Russell having made a sterling job of mending the wing mirror with gaffer tape. Ben insisted on coming, overriding the protests from his mother. ‘She doesn’t really care,’ he said. ‘She just wants people to think she does.’
Moxon was in a single room, with the usual array of wires and monitors, and a mask over his face. His eyes were open and they brightened considerably at the sight of Simmy.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she blurted, before she had even sat down. ‘It was all my fault.’
He pulled the mask away, and gazed earnestly at her. ‘How do you work that out?’
‘I got in the way.’
‘You saved my life. I was totally unprepared for such an attack. He’d have got me in the heart without you.’
‘Oh. Surely not? You must have done self-defence training.’
He smiled. ‘I was paralysed,’ he admitted. ‘It all went right out of my head. I’ve always been more scared of knives than any other weapon.’
‘They’ll easily get him for it, won’t they? There’s the knife. Traces of his hair or skin or whatever in the Coniston house. Evidence from Selena and even Daisy. Even I can see there’s an excellent case. Whatever he says, you’ll nail him with all that against him.’
His eyes twinkled. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he mumbled
from inside the mask.
When she got back to Windermere, Kathy turned up to say goodbye before driving back to Worcester. ‘Can you drive?’ wondered Simmy. ‘With your arms so stiff?’
‘Jo’s coming, too. She’ll take the wheel. And look – I wanted to show you this.’ She revealed a large pottery vase. ‘It’s one made by your friend Ninian. I went to his cottage this morning and bought it.’
‘You what? How did you know where it was?’
‘I asked Melanie. It’s lovely up there, Sim. You really ought to go and see it.’
‘I keep meaning to. I just haven’t got round to it.’
‘Well, he says to tell you he’ll come in and see you today. Probably any minute now. Listen, Sim – I really am terribly sorry for all the trouble. I used you, in a way. I was more worried than I let on to you about what Jo was doing. Claudia had warned me there was something I should worry about, after she’d gone to see Jo at college a few weeks ago. She wouldn’t say much. Didn’t want to be disloyal, and she could see how besotted Joanna was. I was out there hoping to bump into Baz, when he popped out of that mineshaft. It never crossed my mind that he’d turn out to be such a nutcase. I really did think he’d stab me if I gave him any cause. I was a complete wimp. I had absolutely no idea how terrifying it can be when somebody breaks all the usual rules of behaviour. It just turned me to a jelly.’
Simmy thought about her own reckless assault on Goss, and wondered. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she advised. ‘Jo seems to be taking it quite well.’
‘Maybe,’ said Kathy dubiously. ‘Although I doubt if she’ll speak to me all the way home.’
Ninian turned up ten minutes after Kathy had gone. He was clean and brushed and profoundly concerned. ‘I made you something,’ he said, producing a piece of pottery.
It was an intricately fashioned porcelain rose, painted yellow. Each petal was perfect in shape and colour, the whole a piece of artistic splendour. Perched in the centre was a small bee.
‘It’s my version of a Valentine,’ he said, shyly.
Simmy’s smile, as she met his eyes, was every bit as shy. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
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About the Author
REBECCA TOPE lives on a smallholding in Herefordshire, where she plants trees and watches wild birds, but also manages to travel the world and enjoy civilisation from time to time as well. Most of her varied experiences and activities find their way into her books, sooner or later.
www.rebeccatope.com
By Rebecca Tope
THE LAKE DISTRICT MYSTERIES
The Windermere Witness
The Ambleside Alibi
The Coniston Case
THE COTSWOLD MYSTERIES
A Cotswold Killing
A Cotswold Ordeal
Death in the Cotswolds
A Cotswold Mystery
Blood in the Cotswolds
Slaughter in the Cotswolds
Fear in the Cotswolds
A Grave in the Cotswolds
Deception in the Cotswolds
Malice in the Cotswolds
Shadows in the Cotswolds
Trouble in the Cotswolds
THE WEST COUNTRY MYSTERIES
A Dirty Death
Dark Undertakings
Death of a Friend
Grave Concerns
A Death to Record
The Sting of Death
A Market for Murder
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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London W1T 6DW
www.allisonandbusby.com
First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2014.
This ebook edition first published in 2014.
Copyright © 2014 by REBECCA TOPE
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1620–3